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The First Ten Years

To mark the Cape Town Partnership’s 10th birthday, we embarked on a history project to celebrate our achievements, acknowledge our partners and formalise the history of the organisation through a variety of exciting publications and events. Publications and event material include:

History

By the late 1990s, Cape Town’s Central Business District (CBD) was in serious decline. Capital flight had resulted in the increasing commercial decentralisation to new office developments in the city’s suburbs, a loss in value of buildings, and the erosion of the municipality’s rates base. The viability of CBD retail was under threat and a critical shortage of parking, badly managed public space, rising crime rates, and widespread littering were a disincentive to investors, while citizen and tourist confidence was waning. At the same time, in the wake of the democratisation of South African society, the local authority’s development focus was increasingly on disadvantaged areas.

It was in response to this crisis that the Cape Town Partnership was established in July 1999. One of the organisation’s first tasks was to put sound urban management systems in place, in particular, to address issues of crime and grime. To this end, the Partnership organised property owners into the Central City Improvement District (CCID), which was launched in November 2000.

Get Involved

We invite you to share your stories and memories of the City Centre both before and after the Partnership was established in 1999. Submit your story, photos or maps to us by using the form in the right-hand sidebar.